miércoles, 30 de agosto de 2017

Day
and night, he went to the gym. And when he wasn’t there, it wasn’t strange to
see him on a swimming pool, playing tennis, kicking footballs on a park or just
jogging around the neighborhood. Jason had been a chubby kid fro ma very young
age and the bullying he suffered in primary school and then high school, made
him start his training. He finished high school from home and once he entered
university, he was an entirely new person. Many of those who had mocked him,
were now envious of him.

Of course, Jason loved that. He really liked
to see the face on the people that had pushed him into lockers or shamed him in
the changing rooms after gym class. He had seen a number of them in his
university and it was always a pleasure to see their faces when they realized
who they were looking at or, even better, who they were talking too. Even the
many girls that mocked him in school were now falling for him left and right,
forgetting their past words directed at him.

He had been called a “pig”, a “hog” and a “chubby
little fag”. Children can be mean, that’s true. And it’s always blamed on the
parents, rightfully so. But Jason had discovered, with time, that all those
people that had mocked him earlier in his life had always been that horrible.
Yes, maybe they learned at home or they picked it up from the television, but
the fact was that they hadn’t outgrown their bullying ways. Even in university,
Jason saw how many were made fun of.

For a while, he tried to help those people
that had been left out by society at large, either because they were fat or
maybe because they were gay. There wasn’t a single minority that was out of
range for those that mocked them. He went to several meetings of college
groups, he held rallies and supported the so-called liberals to help improve
the situation on campus and he even experimented on a private level to fully
realize he was as open and really free as he thought he was.

The first year in college was good but then he
grew annoyed by the crowds, by those who wanted everything to change. They
wanted the world to see itself through their eyes, instead of trying to be part
of the community. He met very angry people and extremists, where he would have
never thought to see any of those. He stopped going to the meeting, supporting
political candidates and even helping shamed people to stand for themselves. It
had become a burden on him and he felt it wasn’t fair to carry someone’s load
when he had so much to process by himself.

He focused in only two things: his studies and
his workout regime. A year before he got his degree, he was able to pay the
rent for a small apartment not so far from home. He had gotten a job at the gym
he worked out and that had given him enough money to get where he wanted to go.
He was to become a real state agent and he would try to be the best at it.
Jason had always loved many of the things related to that job and he was
certain he could get his license in a heartbeat.

He started as a part-time intern in a real
state agency. There, he could get all the necessary experience to get his
license and maybe even get noticed by some of the bigger agencies to get hired
for a full-time job, hopefully being the person that shows people houses and
apartments. That’s what he wanted to do, for a long time. Jason was even
willing to leave the gym regime in order to get his dream job, although he
would still try to workout as much as he could on nights and weekends.

One day, Jason had left for his job from his
tiny apartment. It wasn’t a perfect life, but the liked it a lot. He really
loved to go and learn a little bit everyday. He had learned some architectural
terms, as well as many things an engineer should know about how houses work. He
had even been taught how to properly accommodate furniture in order to secure a
sale. He was really in love with it all, with every single detail. And it
showed. People would often tell him they thought he looked better, somehow more
energetic.

That morning, when he felt on top of the
world, an SUV came roaring through his street. Jason woke up really early, so
he knew it was uncommon for that to happen. Nevertheless, he didn’t looked back
to the noise, as one would have. He was busy thinking about his day, he was
busy being too happy about himself and his achievement. He was to busy to
notice the SUV had veered towards the building and that it was going at full
speed on the pedestrian side of the road.

A neighbor called the ambulance, several
others watched from their windows or from their doors. No one else helped, no
one else said a word. The woman that had found him had lost a husband recently,
so she knew exactly how it felt to lose someone like that, in the blink of an
eye. So she decided to call and help another family not being torn apart. The
ambulance took a bit too long to get there. When he got to the hospital, Jason
had lost a large amount of blood and the doctors where not optimistic. It was
nothing short of a miracle how he recuperated, in a way.

The hardest moment was when he woke up. Jason
knew immediately what had happened. He didn’t have a hazy memory; he didn’t
pretend he didn’t know what was going on. The moment his eyes opened, that
young man knew his legs weren’t working and they might never work again.He touched them softly and, when the nurses
weren’t there, he pounded the hard, in rage. He wanted to die several times
during the course of the next few weeks. Aside from his legs, the rest of his
body was fine.

Well, except for his brain. Because he was
pissed with the world, with life and with everyone that owned a fucking SUV. He
couldn’t understand how people drove drunk. That was what the police had told
him, that a drunken man had being the one that had put him on that hospital
bed. But they could not really prove it because the SUV had never been found as
no surveillance cameras had ever being installed on that street. No neighbor
had seen anything, or so they said.

Jason grew to hate everyone, especially the
days his mother and father came to his house to take him out for some fresh
air. After being the most admired man in his gym, he was no a ghost of his
past. In a way, he was that “chubby fag” again. He hated everyone for being
able to walk and he preferred to be inside, away from others, sheltered from
their laughs and their lives. His was over, so he didn’t really mind about
anything else. As far as he knew, his life had come to an end.

However, a young policewoman had entered the
force recently. She was called Susannah and had freckles all over her face. She
had being bullied at school and now she was a real police office. She
investigated Jason’s accident and, with resilience and intelligence, she was
able to discover that the person that had run over Jason had not being drunk.
Furthermore, he was a former student in the same high school as Jason and also
in the same university. He was called for questioning shortly after.

Months later, he was sent to jail for
attempted murder, as he confessed he had hated Jason from day one in high
school. He hated that people that he deemed “less” could become successful when
others like him, so successful in early life, were now facing the hard reality
of life.

Susannah explained it all to Jason and he
thanked her for giving him back his life. Inspired by her, he went back to the
gym to try and recover his legs. Nothing was lost forever, not his real estate
license, not his legs, nor his will to live. Jason would never again let go.

viernes, 30 de junio de 2017

It wasn’t very normal for Truman to be
assigned to a special mission. Not that he didn’t deserved to be in one, rather
than his superiors had always deemed preferable that he stayed with the troops,
helping do what soldiers usually do instead of traveling the globe protecting
something or someone. He had never been the bodyguard type and people saw that.
Instead, they considered him a mastermind of strategy, a very skilled mind that
could solve difficult situations were a lot was at risk.

However, about a week or so ago, he had been
summoned by his superiors and instantly praised and thanked for his service.
When they did that, he knew that they wanted something out of him. The only
question was what? What did they want him to do that they couldn’t find anyone
else to do it? Was he their first choice or had they just decided to send
someone that not many people would miss? So many questions amassed in his head
in only a few seconds. His muscles were tense.

After being done with the praising, they explained
they needed him to form a team to protect a very special cargo travelling
through a very difficult region of the world. A region at war that needed to be
crossed by a train carrying very important things for the country. At first,
Truman wasn’t very convinced by the aspect of the mission. He was normally
given a lot to work with but this time they wanted him to get a team just to
ride and protect a train. They wouldn’t say anything else.

But he couldn’t refuse to help him. In the
military, there was no such thing as the word “no”. You can have doubts and you
can even express them to your superiors but you cannot, never, say “no” to any
of their orders. Maybe one day when you become a superior as well and that may
never happen for many reasons people knew very well but preferred not to talk
about. The point was the he had no option but to accept the mission, as vague
and unclear as his orders could be.

Truman contacted every single soldier that he
knew, the ones that were actually good at what they did. The team he needed to
gather had to be very large in order to have a successful trip through deserts
and farmlands, as well as devastated cities. Some of the men he contacted were
spending some time with their families but they all accept in an instant. Again,
there was never a negative word inside of the military; there were just orders
and the right way to proceed about them. Besides, they all respected Truman a
lot, as they knew him from the field.

They were given amazing brand new weapons as
well as a special suit that would protect them in case of an attack. As there
was no time to train, Truman asked the men he had invited to the mission to
exercise daily until the day they traveled to the city where the train was
stationed. They all obliged, going back to their intense gym routine in the
blink of an eye. Most of them loved the pain that exercising brought. They felt
more powerful after it and their confidence was easily boosted.

When
they got to the train, they were kind of surprised to discover that the train
they had to protect was not a cargo train but rather an actual passenger train,
with few but too many passengers for them to worry about. Truman expressed his
concern to one of his bosses but he just said he had done lots of missions like
this one that he didn’t have to worry. But he did, because he had prepared
everything to protect a cargo train, not really a place were people had drinks
and laughed too.

Because the train was not exclusive to one
person. To ensure that their enemies thought twice about attacking the
transport, the government had decide to use passengers as a human shield to
protect whatever it was that the government needed to have protected. It was
very complicated and not very patriotic to use others in order to defend something
that no one knew what it was, but once again, they had to trust the superior
and just proceed with everything, no matter where they were.

The train departed on time, early in the
morning, with at least one hundred people seating inside. The team had no idea
where what they protecting was in the train but, as they guarded doors and
such, they discussed their ideas about what it was and why the government want
to protect it like that. Some said it was only a bunch of papers incriminating
someone somewhere and others were certain it was some kind of new weapon that
they had developed in secret and needed to be moved.

Any of the guesses could be correct, that was
the thing that bothered Truman the most. As he walked outside, in order to
guard the last wagon, he realized for the first time in his life that he had no
idea why he was in that place. Something didn’t feel right to him and when that
happened he did prefer to go with his gut instead than his head. Whenever
something was off, he had stomach cramps. By the time he reached the last
wagon, he wasn’t feeling especially great either. More like the opposite. He
felt a little dizzy and then realized it wasn’t because of his gut.

Before fainting Truman had realized what was
going on: they had used some kind of poison or gas that made people fall
asleep. As his eyes closed, he was certain that he had fallen into some kind of
trap but he had no idea who the trap was supposed to catch. The other soldiers
were not attacked, only him as he was alone and the leader of the bunch. He
woke up much later, judging by the night sky outside. Truman knew that he was
still inside the train but in some sort of closet.

He was very cramped in that small space, his
head still spinning. He wanted to talk to someone; he wanted his questions
answered and his men beside him. But he didn’t get any of his wishes that
night. Instead, he go to hear the most awful of noises: a woman’s scream
pierced the sky. It was so intense, that Truman felt the voice inside him for a
while. The sad thing was that the scream was followed by more screams and they
were not only done by the same woman, but by other people too.

Truman fought the cable they had used to tie
him up. But it didn’t move from his wrists for a second. She tried to make
every part of the small room to shake in order to cause someone to hear him or
at least to be able to open the door but he couldn’t. They must have used some
kind of lock for the door and the cable on his wrists seemed to pierce into his
skin every time he tried to get rid of it. It was very painful, because he had
tried very hard and now his wrists were covered in blood.

The screaming continued and it was followed by
the sound of weapons. Truman’s face was drained of all blood when he heard
something he could recognize anywhere: his brand new weapons. He had practiced
a bit before boarding the train and had discovered how that new assault weapon
was just so much better than existing ones. Apparently they were made only to
be used by a special task force that protected the most private secrets of the
nation, whenever and wherever necessary.

The sound of the weapons lasted for at least
fifteen minutes. Then, it was silence. A very eerie silence because nothing but
the train tracks could be heard. Truman thought that maybe they had been
attacked by the enemy and now they had killed everyone on the train.

But then the door opened and someone pulled
him out of the tiny closet. The brightness of the lights were very hard to look
at but it was way harder to look at one of his superiors with one of the new
weapons on his hand. And on the floor, Truman’s team, all dead. It was the
first time he needed someone to explain the situation.

sábado, 17 de diciembre de 2016

It was very problematic for Sean to admit
that his life had improved dramatically since he had joined the gym. He didn’t
want to tell anyone about it and only went there once a day, six days a week.
Of course, sometime people would ask him where he was and what he was doing,
but he had created the illusion that he was attending cooking lessons at a
school that happened to be in the neighboring building of the gym. The smell of
warm and fresh croissants was almost constant and made almost impossible to focus
on one's obliques.

Sean had never been the kind of guy that went
to the gym and cared about his body. Earlier in his life he openly mocked those
who took too much care of their bodies and looks. To be fair, he still mocked
only that he refrained himself from saying anything out loud because he would
really look like a hypocrite if he said something. The difference was the he
didn’t exercise because he wanted to look better but because he wanted to feel
better, which were too different things. Most of the people there were just
show offs that already had a great body.

Since he was a little boy, he had loved eating
candy. His favorites were salted caramel and chocolate. His life wasn’t
complete when he was at school if he didn’t have a piece of chocolate with his
lunch. It was kind of a ritual, a weird tradition that he had with himself. He
kept that for years, until very recently. Actually, some of his friends had
begun wondering what had happened to the chocolates he always ate and also
about the ones that he kept all over the house in case he wanted something
sweet to enhance his day.

All of those chocolates had disappeared and no
one really understood why. Some were not idiots and had realized Sean had lost
some weight and, weirdly enough, he looked as if he had grown taller and bigger
but not in a bad way. They asked him about it and he only answered he didn’t
really knew why and that he partially blamed work and the classes because of
the tension he went through every single day. Stress could be a powerful force
and could certainly be blamed for many things, so it was a nice save that not
everyone bought.

One of those who hadn’t bought into the story
was Billy. He had noticed something really strange one day they were at Sean’s
apartment watching a movie. At one point, they were having popcorn and Sean
asked if they wanted more. Of course, everyone said yes. To be funny, Sean
raised his hands in the air and exaggerated a positive response. It was then
when Billy saw it: Sean’s shirt had been raised and instead of a normal belly,
he saw a body in the process of getting really ripped. He knew his friend had
never been like that.

Many times before they had taken trips all
together. Billy knew his friends bodies, not because he had an obsession with them
or anything but because he had seen them in their trunks and bikinis. He knew
what they look like. So the new appearance of Sean’s body was a very big
surprise for him. Now that he was thinking about it, he remembered that Sean
had not attended their last trip to the beach. He had told them that he didn’t
feel quite right but when they came back he looked exactly the same, like a
normal healthy person.

Billy decided to follow Sean one day. He
worked for his father so he asked him for a day off from the office in order to
attend some personal business. His father never asked many questions and agreed
almost immediately. They following day, he woke up really early and decided to
follow Sean by bike. He decided not to take the car as he suspected Sean would
know it was him if he saw it. The first time he saw Sean that day was at seven
o’clock, time he left at for work. He stayed in his office until midday, when
he came out to lunch.

It was then when he saw the first red flag:
Sean had never been the type to eat big pieces of meat or a large portion of
anything. He knew how to choose what his body was capable of consuming.
However, he had never been the type to refrain himself from eating something
delicious, even if hat something was not especially good for you. Billy
remembered fondly the time the two of them had eaten a big plate full of spicy
hot wings by themselves, no beverages or carrot sticks with ranch sauce. That
had been a fun day.

But now, he noticed that Sean had bought a
salad for lunch, a salad that didn’t even had a piece of chicken or bacon or
anything. And the worst part of it all was that he really seemed to be enjoying
himself while eating it. Sean stopped looked from a distance and thought that
maybe he was been too judgmental and a tad exaggerated. Maybe it wasn’t such a
bad idea after all if Sean was taking care of himself. He was trying to feel
better or maybe it was that he wanted to look hotter or even that he was dating
and he wanted to look great for that person.

That all went to the mental garbage when Billy
saw Sean pulling a bottle of water from his backpack and drinking from it. That
was just ridiculous. One thing was to take care of his body and all of that but
drinking plain water with a lunch that consisted mostly on a bunch of leaves
only a turtle would eat, was just insane. Billy thought that there was
something really wrong with his friend because he had never seen him like this.
Something had to be wrong, that was clear. But what could it be or why could it
be?

After waiting for several hours in a café
across the street, Billy followed Sean again and the next destination, to no
surprise, was the gym. Granted, it was not the type of gym that had many
windows and looked more like a giant fish tank than like a human building, but
nevertheless it was a strange thing. Billy decided to go in, as he would see
nothing from outside. Of course, he had to pretend he was interesting in
joining because otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed entrance. A trainer
showed him round but he didn’t really listened.

He only saw Sean many minutes later, working
out on a huge machine that seemed to be used to help exercise the abdominal area.
He had no trainer besides him and seemed to be focusing a lot on what he was
doing. For Billy, the sight was really strange but not because it was his
friend but because he had never seen someone so focused to do something like
that. For a moment, he even thought it was quite admirable that Sean had
decided to take on such a challenge, but moments later he felt betrayed again,
as a friend.

He decided to confront Sean. He ditched the
trainer telling him he would join after walking around alone and then walked,
almost ran, straight to where Sean was. As expected, Sean was quite taken aback
when he saw his friend standing there. But then he decided to finish his
exercise and then finally stand up, sweating more than he would have wanted to
in that moment. The two friends looked at each other and didn’t say a word, not
until someone dropped a weight somewhere, slamming his foot. They both laughed,
which eased the tension.

Sean explained to his friend that he had
always had self-esteem problems, going back to his high school days. He had
always felt fat and ugly and he recently had realized he could actually do
something about it. He had begun exercising over a year ago but the change in
food had been done very recently. He didn’t call it a diet because he ate as
always on weekends and he couldn’t say he was going vegan or vegetarian because
his favorite meals consisted of pork chops in a pineapple sauce. Anyway, he was
trying something to help him achieve his goal.

He told Billy he was sorry for lying but Billy
interrupted him saying he was a bad friend for never having really talk about
their past in a much more open way. If they had, he would have known his buddy’s
struggles and could even have helped him. He told Sean he was sorry and then
hugged him, which was a first for the two as they had always been the kind of
buds that only shake hands. It was a new beginning to their friendship, a much
needed one.

jueves, 17 de noviembre de 2016

The machine was launching balls every few
minutes and Agatha attempted to hit them with her racket in the best way she
could. She had never been very good at sports but, this time, she really needed
to learn how to play something. One of her clients, a man who was very rich and
famous, was very much into the world of tennis and had proposed her to have a
match just before they sat down to negotiate a deal that would mean millions of
dollars for everyone. At first, she didn’t want to accept but she ultimately
did.

She decided to join a huge gym near the office
in order to practice every single day until the date of their meeting. Thanks
to her boss, the man agreed on having the game a month later, giving her a good
amount of time to learn the basics. Her boss insisted that, if she did well
during the game, they would benefit greatly from the client’s good sense of
humor, It was not uncommon in that company to try and make every client feel
like they all understood their hobbies and passions. Rich people could get very
weird and even dangerous.

There was Mrs. Stevenson, for example, who had
a large collection of snakes in her house. As a potential client, they had to
make her feel accepted and nice so one of Agatha’s co workers had to go to her
house several times and feed the snakes. Sometimes, it could be very easy but
other times it would be awfully dangerous. He was bitten a couple of times but,
Thank god, the snakes had no poison in them to do anything, so he never
required going to the doctor or anything like that. The point was, they won
that account and locked millions of dollars.

Agatha herself had gone out with at least five
different potential clients. As any decent woman, she had her limits. So it
wasn’t a surprise that some of the people they assigned to her, never really
got to be proper clients. Men always wanted more than they should get and it
wasn’t once but many times when she felt really weird and uncomfortable,
whether it was because of a weird attitude or an inappropriate way to touch her.
In most cases, she preferred women clients but they normally got assigned one
of her male coworkers.

Anyway, she went to the gym every single day
for the next month. The first days were extremely difficult because the
automated machine that helped her practice had beat her up with several balls
at high speed. The person at the gym said the machine had personality, which
wasn’t really the best excuse or argument to be made for it. But she kept
trying and by the end of the first week, she was able to properly hit the ball,
even if the angles were all a little bit strange. In any case, that was the
first hurdle she had gone over, so she was very happy.

The
bad side of all of it was the sore elbows and shoulders every day after
practice. She walked like a zombie at work and had a new tendency to fall
asleep really early. It wasn’t that strange as the gym hours she could use were
very late so Agatha got home around one in the morning. And then, she had to
wake up at six o’clock in order to be in the office just in time. She couldn’t
wait to end all of it with this new client and go back to boring launches or
just keeping her desk job, which she really didn’t mind about, especially when
she was so sore.

In the office, she actually tried to learn a
little bit more about her client before meeting him. All the information she
had was based out of the report that her boss had given to her. But, of course,
she needed much more than just knowing what the man liked. She really needed to
know him better if the idea was to lure him into their company. She began her
research in the office but, weirdly enough, there were a pretty low amount of
articles about him and there was no picture to be found in any website. Not from a social event or a personal thing. Nothing.

Agatha soon got tired of looking for the guy.
She went to her boss’s office and asked him if they could talk about their
client. But she has apparently chosen a bad moment as he was holding the phone
and a hysterical woman was yelling at him from the other side. The voice was
extremely loud and Agatha knew she wouldn’t get anything right then. So she
then moved to her friend Cynthia’s office, in order to talk a little bit about
how uncomfortable this all was. The fact that she was preparing so much for a
meeting with a person she had never seen.

Cynthia assured her that the client was very
new and maybe that’s why there were no pictures or thorough information on the
person. That night, during practice, she decided to play a little bit more
violent. Not only because she didn’t know the gay but because she was really
pissed off at herself for the job she had and the things she had to do to keep.
As she hit every ball as hard as she could, she remembered the days she had
wanted to become a baker. She had always loved that profession and would have
loved to pursue it but things rarely go exactly as we want them.

She stayed so late that night, than the next
morning she decided to call in sick and just not go. It was a Friday and it was
very well known that they were never really productive on Fridays. So Agatha
could have a long weekend and try to reorder her thoughts and priorities as
well as she could. She had a hearty breakfast and then spent fifteen minutes in
the shower, with hot water forming some kind of sauna all around her. It felt
really good,

By lunch, she already knew what she was going
to do. There was only one week to go to her date with the client and then
everything will be over for her. She was determined to quit her job and use her
savings to live around, until another opportunity showed itself. Of course,
looking for a job that matched her skills was not the easiest thing to do, she
had found out that she was fed up with all the clients and the extra work and
everything she had no idea about. It didn’t matter how much money she won
there. That money could help her survive a few months, if necessary.

She was tired of pleasing everyone else but
herself. She hadn’t taken a proper vacation in a long time and it was really
due because every single day she felt tired and bored. Cynthia, for example,
didn’t have to deal with clients directly like her so she didn’t really care
about it all. It was difficult for anyone to understand why Agatha wanted to
leave a job that paid so well but she was so frustrated with it all. That
client, the tennis client, would be her last one and that tennis match would be
the last thing she did for that company.

When the day finally came, she prepared
herself by buying the best outfit for the occasion. She wanted to look good but
also very professional. It was very difficult to do in the tennis skirt she had
bought, because of the length, but the idea was that she would distract him
into thinking about something else and then he would sign anything and
everything. The game started with a slight advantage on Agatha’s hand but it
soon became a really even game, where they played as if their lives depended on
it. The guy happened to be excellent at the game.

When she finally so his face, she was able to
put a proper image on the large amount of thoughts she had imagined about him
and the game and everything that had to do with that moment. After two sets,
one won by each, they decided to rest and talk a little bit. Agatha decided
that was the perfect time to talk about business. However, he didn’t even have
to: the man grabbed all the papers and signed every single one of them in silence
and with a beautiful pen that he kept on his tennis bag. She never expected
thing to go that way.

The man told her he had decided on working
with them the moment she showed her fierceness, her need to overcome an obstacle that she obviously had. To him, it was clear she had never properly
played tennis. But he admired her obvious dedication to it. Just before the
match began again, he asked her how happy she was working in that place. It was
just as if he knew what she was thinking. So she just blinked her eye and told
him they needed to keep playing.